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DIY ModMic (Headset Microphone)

Introduction: DIY ModMic (Headset Microphone)

I love to use my Sony RF810 Headphones while gaming. They sound great and are really comfortable. The headphones were wireless only, which made them quite noisy, but i added an audio jack and that's fixed. But there is one problem. When I want to play with some friends, I want to be able to communicate with them, sure I could just buy an Headset, but those don't sound as good. I could also just buy an Antlion Modmic, but those are ridiculously expensive. 70 Euro is not a price I'm ready to pay for a microphone. So I did what every normal person does and went on Ebay. People were selling Modmics there, but they were also way too expensive. So I decided to make my own.

Step 1: Requirements

To do this project yourself you will need:

Sticky Velcro

Tweezers

A sharp knife

Your headphones

A microphone

Most cheap microphones on Ebay are lavalier mics, that is not what we need. You will need a microphone with a wire that goes over your head, as shown in the picture. You can find it on Ebay with the keywords: "Microphone for Lectures"

Step 2: Removing the Wire

In order for us to be able to mount the microphone to the headphones we need to remove the wire that goes over your head. First you need to remove the foam from the microphone. Just but your knife under one of the corners and then pull the foam off with your tweezers. After this, remove the end cap from the wire, and pull the rubber sleeving off of it. Now you can push on the wire as far as you can. It's possible that you will have to use your tweezers to pry the wire up, so that it can come out completely. I also had to cut the plastic a bit, and I messed that up. I accidentally cut the right signal cable to the microphone. Oh well, I guess I will have to use it in Mono. So don't do that if you don't want to be forced to use mono.

Step 3: Cutting the Velcro

Now, with the metal wire removed, you can put the foam, with the soft side facing down, on to the sticky side of the Velcro.

I placed it on to the soft part of the Velcro, as I will be using these headphones outdoors, and if I had put the soft side on the headphones, it would have gotten dirty very quickly, but with the side with the tiny hooks, that's not going to be much of a problem.

With the foam stuck to the Velcro, you can use your knife, with the foam as a template, to cut the Velcro to size. After that you can stick the other side of the Velcro to your cut piece and use it to cut that.

Step 4: Mounting

For some reason my Velcro came with the tape only on one side, so I used the piece as a template to cut a some strong double sided tape to size and attached it. Now you can take the protective film off of the tap, and stick it to your mic however you desire.

Step 5: Extra's

Depending on the placement the microphone may be a little silent. You can fix this in two ways.

1. Software You can use a piece of software to adjust the gain of your microphone, and if you messed up, to mix it to mono. I personally used VoiceMeeter to do this before building myself a piece of hardware for this function. (An Instructable of this will be here shortly)

2. Hardware

Besides software you can also use a hardware amplifier for this function.